Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Most Terrorists are White Christians, Colleges Say

More educators are teaching American students that the greater risk to the public is white Christian terrorists rather than Muslim terrorists.

“Ninety percent are from these white Caucasian men. . . . Usually they are people who are religiously motivated and politically conservative. . . . Just a few months ago, a white, I think he was Christian, I thought he was Christian because there was something about, you know, ‘the state claimed against God’s law and stuff’ . . .”-- Dr. Ross Avilla, taught in “Introduction to Psychology” at University of California-Merced in October 2015

Two students in the class who provided the video of the lecture to The College Fix last week asked to remain anonymous. They said they waited to release it until their grades were secured, and also out of respect for the mourning period at UC Merced after Mohammad’s stabbing spree.

[Dr. Ross Avilla] essentially argued many Americans wrongly believe Muslims make up the vast majority of U.S. terrorists because they have not thought long and hard on the matter.

The scholar made the statements to his class of about 250 students, mostly freshmen.

“They are students who are impressionable,” one of the students who provided the video told The College Fix, adding “I wanted to learn about psychology. I didn’t want to hear biased politics.”

A widely touted study claiming right-wing extremism is more deadly than Islamic terrorism in the United States has been debunked by a history professor who shows that, in actuality, there have been 62 Americans killed by Islamic terrorists in the U.S. for every one American killed by right-wing extremists.

Professor Andrew Holt of Florida State College at Jacksonville recently published his analysis that discredits the widespread sentiment that right-wing attackers are the deadliest domestic terrorists in the U.S.

Holt’s analysis points out numerous flaws in the highly cited study released in 2015 by New America Foundation, which claimed 48 deaths in the U.S. were due to “far right wing attacks” while only counting 45 deaths due to “violent jihadist attacks.”

The study’s findings were not only touted by many major news outlets across the nation as proof that fears over radical Islamic terror in the U.S. are overblown, but the findings are also used today in some college classrooms as an example of Islamophobia.

But, Holt points out the foundation’s findings are based on flawed data sets.

The now oft repeated claim that right wing extremism is more dangerous to Americans than Islamic extremism is based on total deaths and excludes casualties. Moreover, such accounts limit themselves to attacks in the United States (not worldwide), and purposefully exclude the nearly 3,000 deaths (as well as the over 6,000 survivors treated at hospitals) that took place on September 11, 2001. They don’t count the 9/11 deaths as then the numbers would be extraordinarily lopsided (in terms of total U.S. deaths due to Islamic extremism vs right wing extremism) and so such claims are careful to be based only on deaths in the United States AFTER the events of 9/11.

Indeed, if you include the death totals from 9/11 in such a calculation, then there have been around 62 people killed in the United States by Islamic extremists for every one American killed by a right wing terrorist (a 62 to 1 ratio if you divide the slightly over 3000 deaths due to Islamic extremism by the 48 deaths attributed to right wing extremism).

. . . recognize the disproportionately high number of attacks by Islamic extremists in the United States, who, even after excluding the victims of 9/11, are still responsible for around 50% of the total number of deaths due to extremism, even though Muslims only account for around 1% of the total U.S. population.